And Yet God Has Not Said A Word
by Olivia Circe
Summary: Is this how they play the game? Sarkney Ficathon Fic.


Fandom: Alias, Sark/Syd  
Spoilers: Through "Counteragent," veers vaguely AU  
Rating: PG-13  
Distribution: Ask  
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue. Not sure I really want them, anyway, except maybe Irina.  
Feedback: What do you think I live for?  
  
A/N: This was written (two months late) for the Sarkney Ficathon. Fatema requested Seasons 1 or 2, Sark being playful and teasing Sydney about something, lingering looks, and witty sexy banter. I don't think I succeeded at that. It's darker than she probably wanted, and stranger. For that, and for the lateness, I apologize. I hope there's something in it that you like anyway, Fatema.  
  
Some familiarity with Robert Browning's "Porphyria's Lover" is strongly suggested, but not required. For those who care about such things, this story is written in 16 100-word drabble-segments. Gabby is the best beta ever. She held my hand while I hated the first Sarkney I wrote, and pushed me until the ideas swirled and mixed enough to produce something worthwhile.  
  
----  
  
And Yet God Has Not Said A Word  
  
-----  
  
She can feel him watching her from across a briefing room he shouldn't be in, though he never misses a beat. She is resolute, and concentrates on Sloane and Marshall as if they speak in riddles. His blue eyes are impenetrable, meaningless except for the cigarette-burn holes in her defenses.  
  
He's a riddle himself, but she can't take the time to solve it. She's too on edge, too wary of increased threats to her security. She does her best to ignore his gaze, but sometimes there's an overwhelming rushing in her ears that reminds her of ocean waves and thunderstorms.  
  
-----  
  
Vaughn notices at the warehouse. "You okay, Syd?"  
  
"Fine." She's a little terse, but he can handle it. He always does.  
  
"Sark bothering you?"  
  
She shrugs. "He shouldn't be here."  
  
"No argument there." He pats her shoulder. "You just have to be careful."  
  
She could have told him that. Only it isn't about being careful, this time, or treading cautiously. It's about caring about being careful. It's about the dangerous thrill of keeping secrets, of telling secrets, of risking secrets. It's an intimacy Vaughn doesn't know.  
  
Sometimes she thinks she'll never be close to anyone who isn't a double agent.  
  
-----  
  
She spends more time with her mother, glass wall looming evocatively between them. She invents excuses, then asks about Sark.  
  
"He's one of the best." Irina says enigmatically.  
  
At what? she wonders. "You trained him."  
  
"Of course." Her mother studies her with piercing brown eyes that she recognizes from the mirror. "Why the sudden interest?"  
  
"He's been invading my business with increasing regularity." She sounds like her father.  
  
"Your country's business," Irina corrects. "Or did you forget?"  
  
Sydney is silent.  
  
"He's more like you than you know. I practically raised him."  
  
"You didn't raise me," she protests. Her mother smiles.  
  
-----  
  
She works with him grudgingly, mission after mission. Sloane makes noises about permanent reassignment.  
  
"He's testing you, Sydney," her father says when she complains, "just be careful." She wishes somebody would give her different advice.  
  
Sark is courteous, collected, and smooth. He almost never makes mistakes. He slips needled barbs into their short conversations: her mother, her technique, her priorities, Sloane. Yet he is careful with his darts, and covers her back more than once.  
  
When he raises sardonic eyebrows at her equivocations, when his voice drips sarcasm at her lies, she tries to answer his barbs with honest aggression.  
  
-----  
  
"You look lovely, Ms. Bristow." Sark says in Amsterdam. He rarely calls her Sydney.  
  
"It's useless to flatter me." The drop is a masquerade ball, and she carries a gold mask on a stick to match her glittering dress. The multiplicity of disguises fascinates her.  
  
"I wasn't." He wears a black mask and a tuxedo accented in red. It reminds her of Dumas, and she can't help picturing Sark with a rapier. It is strangely fitting.  
  
Unlike Dixon and Vaughn, he does not ask if she is ready, merely hands her the sparkling handbag with their smoke-and-mirrors tricks of trade.  
  
-----  
  
There is a box of black-and-white photographs hidden in the back of her closet. They are mostly of her parents on their honeymoon. She doesn't know why these pictures in particular are black-and-white instead of color, but she has always loved them.  
  
Even with SD-6 and the CIA, Laura Bristow and Irina Derevko, there is a simplicity in clear black-and-white that comforts her. For a while she can forget about complicated shades of color and believe in clean duality. Last week, though, she started to notice the layers of gray in the old photos. She hasn't looked at them since.  
  
-----  
  
On a beach in Fiji he compliments her on her style. "I admire aggression in a woman."  
  
She frowns at him as she towels dry her straggling hair. "Why do you care?"  
  
He raises an eyebrow. "It's in my best interests."  
  
"I'm in your best interests? Since when?"  
  
"Since we work together. Really, Ms. Bristow, past differences aside, you're truly a pleasure to watch." He sounds sincere, but it's undercut with the fine flavor of mockery.  
  
"What do you want, Sark?" She demands, infuriated to directness.  
  
He smiles like a dragon, all sharp teeth and feral eyes. "I have it."  
  
-----  
  
It eats at her like the tide, wearing away her once solid foundations. Eventually, she goes to see her mother again.  
  
"I was expecting you," Irina says, setting down her book.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"You want to know Sark's objective. It's quite simple, really." She pauses for effect. "He wants a worthy adversary in the game."  
  
One more answer hangs elusively in the air. She strikes, "Who?"  
  
Irina tilts her head, as if to say 'isn't it obvious?' "You."  
  
It makes a twisted sort of sense, and she wonders if this visit has fallen neatly into some pre-ordained pattern of checkered squares.  
  
-----  
  
"That was the sixth time you've saved my life," she remarks conversationally after a messy escape in Mexico City.  
  
"Indeed." He is wrapping his bleeding arm with a first-aid bandage.  
  
"Is it part of the game?"  
  
He looks up, something almost like surprise flitting across his face. "Your gratitude is astounding, Ms. Bristow," he says dryly.  
  
She smiles. "I think you won't let me get hurt."  
  
"Isn't that what partners do? Although I admit, you have rather a penchant for life-threatening situations"  
  
"We aren't partners, Sark. We're enemies."  
  
"Oh yes, I'd forgotten." He returns to his bandaging, expression inscrutably smug.  
  
-----  
  
Vaughn corners her after debrief. "Your countermissions are getting sloppy, Syd."  
  
"It's been a tough few weeks."  
  
Vaughn is understanding. "I know working with Sark is difficult, but you're off your game. You need to focus."  
  
She smiles and nods until he goes away, then runs in the other direction. She's more on her game than she's been in months, but the game has new rules now, and they play with a currency of secrets and lies, questions and answers, gunshots and lives. It's thrilling, not knowing if the good guys will win, not knowing if she wants them to.  
  
-----  
  
On the next mission she reverses the board and saves his life instead. She had thought she'd catch him unawares, but this is Sark and almost nothing startles him. He thanks her politely, as though she had passed him the bread, and she is reminded of his dry comment on her lack of gratitude.  
  
She doesn't mention the life saving in her mission deconstruction, but for once she returns his watchful gaze across the briefing room. As she breezes through Jack's questions, breaking everything down into quantitative results, she thinks she catches a faint glint of approval in Sark's eyes.  
  
-----  
  
"What's your name?" She asks him on a plane from Los Angeles to Rome.  
  
"Why do you ask?" He replies blandly, focused on the report in front of him.  
  
She shrugs and sips her drink. "Curiosity." One of his eyebrows quirks. "Don't say it."  
  
"I shan't. I'm hardly that common. Although you do have certain cat-like tendencies, Ms. Bristow." He leans back in his seat, arms negligently crossed.  
  
"Like what?" She rises to the bait.  
  
"Nine lives, perhaps."  
  
She snorts, almost amused and effectively distracted. It isn't until they have landed at the airport that she remembers her original question.  
  
-----  
  
Will takes her out for dinner the next weekend she is home. She lets him pay, and reminds herself to reimburse Francie later. She changes the subject when he asks about work. Will knows all about challenges and the heady feeling that comes of discovering secrets, but he doesn't know anything about giving them away.  
  
He is intimately acquainted with Sark's evil, with his skill at torture and destruction. Perhaps even more so than Sydney is. She doesn't think he'll understand the amazing excitement she gets from treading on the edge of that destruction, from trespassing across dangerously colored lines.  
  
-----  
  
Sark compliments her again at a bar in Cape Town. Her hair is yellow and she wears black leather and white silk.  
  
"I wish you wouldn't do that," she remarks, before realizing it's the most passive thing she's ever said to him.  
  
He is watching the room for their contact. "Do you?"  
  
"It's disconcerting."  
  
"Indeed." She hates that word and opens her mouth to tell him so, but he stands and drops a coin on the bar. "He's on his way over here. I'll meet you at the hotel," he murmurs in her ear before slipping away through the crowd.  
  
-----  
  
It's 2 a.m. and the rain has been falling for an hour when she makes it back to their room. He is waiting for her, watching the door unblinkingly as a chameleon. As soon as she shuts it behind her he is kissing her against it, lips hot and alcoholic on hers.  
  
She closes her eyes until Irina's smiling face appears behind them. After that, his deadly blue intensity is infinitely preferable to her mother's satisfaction.  
  
They are worthy opponents, and nothing about this surprises her, not even his sandpaper hands on her skin as they tumble towards the bed.  
  
-----  
  
In the dark, she listens to the falling rain. Her clothes, weapons, and yellow wig are strewn with his across the floor, and she can't remember if she locked the door. She'd check, but he is laying half on top of her. She ponders the meanings of lie and lies, lying and laying, wondering if this, too, is simply part of the game.  
  
Sark stirs and opens his eyes, reaches out and rolls them over until they are coiled together again, his mouth next to her ear.  
  
"My name is Julian," he says, and wraps his hands around her neck.  
  
-----  
  
end 


End file.
